Horror movies do something strange and incredible to your brain

IMDB When you sit down to watch a movie, you know that it isn’t real. And yet sometimes, a particular film has you on the edge of your seat, ready to jump as if it were as real as the couch you’re sitting on. That’s a powerful effect. Think of the last time you jumped, yelped, or gasped during a horror film. “Usually when we’re watching something we’ve shut down the motor regions of the brain, and yet those stimuli [from a shocking scene] are so strong that they overcome the inhibition to the motor system,” says Michael Grabowski, an associate professor of communication at Manhattan College and the editor of the textbook “Neuroscience and Media: New Understandings and Representations.” We jump or yell because a film bypasses our tranquilized state…